WWYDW: Offside Review

When Gabriel Landeskog failed to get back on the bench quickly during game 7 of the Western Conference Semifinallast week, it reignited the debate surrounding the NHL’s offside review process. Despite the fact that Landeskog was no longer considered part of the play, the NHL ruled that the Avalanche were offside on what would have been Colin Wilson’s game-tying tally, and the goal was disallowed.

In theory, the coach’s challenge was supposed to make the league and its officials more accountable, but some critics believe the increasing number of challenges on marginal offside plays aren’t in the spirit of the rule, and interfere with the pace of the game.

Should the NHL keep the offside review or get rid of it?

speering major:

If the Canucks won 1st or 2nd in the lottery, you could definitely justify it. If you are G.M. you are in a situation that is short term biased. If you aren’t winning, your job is on the line. Being patient might be the right thing to do but it’s pointless if you get fired before you have a chance to follow through on your plan. If I was in Benning’s shoes here, yes i might take a swing at Myers. I would definitely take a swing if they had lottery luck this year. Do I think it’s a good idea? No

The Canucks need a RHD for sure. The problem is, nobody is going to give up an established top 4 RHD who is in their prime. They will always come with a bad contract, the wrong side of 30, or the price will be insanely high. This is why you wait until your team is much closer to being competitive than the Canucks are now. You don’t sign now so that you have Myers on the decline and way over paid as the team matures. You over pay in the situation the sharks are in. Competitive now. Or perhaps in the Sabers position where they have a young core and plenty of solid pieces that are on the cusp of taking a big leap forward. Then Canucks are at least a year or two behind that.

On top of that, the Canucks are looking for someone to be a top 4 on the right side long term to join Stetcher. It’s a single piece. If they have a wealth of depth on the left side (Edler signs and O.J. lives up to potential) then they can move one of the top four over to the right side for now. Or they can make a move to trade a lefty for a righty. Patience is an interesting thing. One minute you have no #1, then you have Lou and Schnieder controversy. Markstrom took a leap this year and Demko might challenge him. Stetcher came from nowhere and is a young solid top 4 RHD. Woo looks promising. The Canucks are drafting high again. Trades, college FA’s, Russian and Euro FA’s, Tryamkin, etc, etc.

It’s easy to be patient when your job isn’t on the line but it’s the best approach here IMO

DogBreath:

No. He was only a 3rd pairing in Winnipeg (sometimes 2nd pairing) who will inevitably be overpaid by someone. Despite the Canucks glaring need to upgrade the D, they must continue to build through the draft and trades. Patience in their evolution is still critical to their longterm success.

Killer Marmot:

I would most certainly bid for Tyler Myers. He’s precisely the type of player the Canucks should be looking for on the UFA market, and they can afford it. I can’t think of a single sort of signing that would have more impact.

And if the fish is landed, look to trade Tanev. If no inviting offer is forthcoming — quite possible given Tanev’s salary and unimpressive injury-laden season — then no big deal, as Tanev’s contract runs out in a year. It’s been a while since the Canucks had three good players at right defense anyway.

wojohowitz:

Benning has been praying for shortcuts right from the beginning and rarely has it worked. Baertschi and Granlund sort of worked out. What he has to do is trade quality for quality. Young forwards for young defencemen. Virtanen, Gaudette, maybe Madden and that`s about it for young forwards with trade value.

j2daff:

I’d personally be looking to see if there was a deal(s) that could weaponize our short term(1-3 years) cap space first which would add assets and make it easier to be patient and rebuild. They may not be willing to give up enough to make it worth it but teams like TB, TO and WPG all are going to have a tough time signing some of there key plays this off season.

This rebuild is at the point now where it is eating the prime years of Horvat, inevitably Boeser and potentially before we get truly competitive some of Hughes and Petey’s prime. That’s a bad thing and even worse if you are the fan that eyes a cup not just the playoffs.

If I couldn’t find a team willing to give up enough to move out $$$ I’d probably look at Myers and offer him $5 Mil. per for 4 years, which would probably get shot down but that’s ok, I’d prefer that over handcuffing the team in the future. Regardless, I’d be looking/hoping to find a RD like Lassi Thomson in the second round as it will be an area of need regardless and I just don’t see how the take a deference at number 10.

Ken Priestlay Fan:

Myers would make the Canucks better now, but any contract he gets is going to be an anchor in a few years time, which is likely to be smack bang in their cup window. Best case scenario is that he helps them get into the playoffs, but he’s not going to push them into win mode, not even close. I’d rather they went after someone like Stralman for a couple of years, give the kids some time to develop. He’s not as good a player as Myers, but he’d come on a much better contract

North Van Halen:

This summer and the decisions Benning makes really are the key to the future of this club. The team is still clearly 2 – 3 years from competing for a cup but may be 1 or 2 pieces from competing for the playoffs. Does Benning have the vision to keep building towards the ultimate goal while adding ‘smart’ pieces to push them further in their short term goals.
Tying up term & cash to a guy like Myers would have decent short term upside bit the contract would likely have awful long term ramifications. It’s really hard to envision Myers being worth his salary if the term exceeds 3 – 4 years and the cash exceeds $5mil/yr. Unfortunately, Myers would likely cost more term and money than that so I would hope Benning doesn’t ‘target’ Myers like he did Beagle last year and say whatever it takes. That would be a disaster.
Every move at this point should either be short term, even if they’re overpayments for 1 or 2 years, or they need to be players that will be peaking with the youthful core. No long term contracts should be offered to anyone over 27, so, to me, this effectively eliminates Myers from consideration.
Honestly, I’ve long felt Benning deserves this one last year to finish what he started but I’m equally terrified some combination of Simmonds/Ferland/Myers is about to occupy $12+mil of our salary cap for the next 5 years essentially dooming the club to a unnecessary cap hell and extended mediocrity.
To me, Myers is almost the test case on whether Benning has learned anything in the last 5 years. If I’m FA and Benning even proposed a long term, high dollar contract, I would phone Ron Francis to see if he’s available.

Goon:

I think many of the commenters here are significantly undervaluing Myers. He’s had over 30 points the past two seasons and plays around 19 minutes a game. That’s not a third-pairing defenceman. This year he’d have been second to Edler in scoring from the back end, and last year he would have lead the team. He would immediately be the team’s best right-handed defenceman.

All that being said, I’d be very nervous about signing him. I’m sure he’ll be great next year, and the addition of Myers and Hughes plus a few tweaks up front might be enough to get the Canucks into the playoffs. But the goal isn’t to squeeze into the playoffs, it’s to build a cup contender, and the Canucks are a couple years away from that. Does 32-year-old Tyler Myers making $6.8 million help the Canucks win a cup? I’m not so sure.

If Benning can sign him to reasonable term and dollars, do it, for sure. If he’s asking for a seven-year contract at $7 million plus, that’s just not worth the risk.

11 Comments |

You used to not be able to pass over two lines. The NHL was wise to get rid of that rule. Hell, you used to not be able to pass forward. What a dreadful idea.

Just get rid of offsides entirely. If teams want to play high-risk, cherry-picking hockey, let them. It’s stupid that the league keeps calling these goals back because one guy had his toe ahead of the puck while entering the offensive zone.

The NHL should be trying to reduce stoppages in play, increase offense, and improve flow. Get rid of offsides. They serve no purpose except to slow the game down and discourage risk-taking.

I think the discussion should start with why you need offside’s. Do i want to see lobs over the defence to a guy basically standing around the attacking zone?.. Essentially thats what you see in basketball. Soccer you need offside since basically thats almost a automatic goal majority of the time.. I don’t particularly want to see teams basically playing lob city or long passes the entire freakn game.. I want to see either carry the puck into the zone or dump it in and get it back..

Upon further review, the balance between getting it right and playing through has swung too far toward being right. Either give the war-room a firm time limit to overturn a ruling on the ice (30 seconds?), otherwise the ruling stands or allow the game to continue and make a ruling retroactively, during a later stoppage in play. Ideally, all goals in the playoffs should be quietly looked at by the war-room immediately, before a coach initiates a challenge such that if a challenge is made, a ruling is quick and final.

I don’t know. There are still enough situations where a defensive team that’s tired did end up clearing the zone and deserves that whistle, but the refs miss it and it ends up a goal after said defensive team is warn out. I like the review for that. You can argue that if the off side comes way before the goal then it’s “against the spirit of the rule” but that ignores the fatigue factor of the defensive players.

To me this is just another example of there being no perfect solution. You can’t have gray areas either and let the refs make “judgement calls”. It needs to be black and white in this case. I say leave it in. Better to take away a goal you didn’t deserve, even if it is sometimes a “technicality”, than give a goal that wasn’t deserved.

If they wanted to experiment with no off-sides at all, I’d be interested to see the results.

What they really need is a quicker decision, like an off-ice but in-house arbitrator working within a time frame of 60 – 90 seconds, rather than a `war room` committee debating the issue. How long is a commercial time-out; 90 seconds and no complaints?

Let referees make the call. Video review is ruining sports by delaying games and robbing fans of great plays. Review goals if you must. But everything else should fall into the realm of acceptable human error, which is what sports is all about. While I know it is “life or death” for many fans, it’s a freaking game! A missed call is no more problematic than a bad bounce off a stanchion that leads to a goal.

The outrage created by perceived unfairness is part of fandom. As Canucks fans, we all know it and relish it. Let’s accept it and embrace the human frailty that is the essence of sport.

This league continues to boggles one mind when you consider the Sharks winning goal in OT last night. Clearly a hand pass and all four officials missed it. When Karlsson popped it in all the Sharks kind of just stood around not too excited IMO fully expecting the goal to be called off…and it wasn’t. What they review and don’t review in this league is truly bizarre and didn’t in this case. Where’s the NHL’s credibility heading?

If all they reviewed were goals I’d be fine with it. The ticky tack is his toe over the line stuff is absolute nonsense. To not be able to review a playoff OT goal when there was a clear infraction of the rules is crazy.